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Operative Systems Midterm Project

In this paper, we measure the memory performance throughout the Phoronix test "RAMspeed SMP". We decide to test this specific benchmark because we know how important is the memory for the system performance. This document shows how much the memory performance could change if we modify some variables in the linux kernel.

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\begin{document}
\title{RAM performance with modifications on the kernel}
\author{José Francisco Robles Sapién \& Daniel Alejandro Jiménez Gómez }
\date{October 18th 2016}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
In this paper, we measure the memory performance throughout the Phoronix
test \textquotedblleft RAMspeed SMP\textquotedblright . We decide
to test this specific benchmark because we know how important is the
memory for the system performance. This document shows how much the
memory performance could change if we modify some variables in the
linux kernel.
\end{abstract}
\section{Introduction}
For instance, the RAM memory does not directly affect the processor
performance. The RAM cannot make that the processor\textquoteright s
clock rate increases and work faster; consequently, the memory do
not increase the performance. Then, how the RAM is related to the
performance? The processor need several instructions to work, the
processor search them in the RAM, if the instructions are not stored
there, they will have to be transferred from the HDD or SSD to the
RAM. Having more amount of RAM memory imply that more instructions
can fit in the memory, and bigger programs can be loaded at once.
If the memory in the RAM is not enough to load a program, the processor
creates a file in the HDD called Swap File, it is used to store the
RAM data. The problem is that requesting data from the hard disk is
way more expensive than order it from the RAM. For example, the processor
communicates with the RAM at a transfer rate of 800 MB/s and with
the fastest hard disk at 100 MB/s (Computer Memory Upgrade, 2003).
RAM not only permits that the CPU access files faster, it also helps
to run more processes simultaneously. The RAM capacity, and the faster
its cycles (MHz) are, is proportional to the number of processes the
processor can run at the same time (Williams, n.d).
\section{Theoretical Framework}
RAM (Random-Access Memory) is the main place for storing instructions
and data while a program is being executed. Before the CPU can run
the program, the data is copied into the RAM. Each memory location
in the RAM allocates one word of data. The words have a size, and
it is how many bits the CPU can manipulate in one go (Bitesize, n.d).
RAM has two attributes that are directly related to the system\textquoteright s
performance:
\begin{itemize}
\item Capacity: The bytes that the memory has to store instructions and
data.
\item Speed: The time that takes to the RAM to receive a request from the
CPU and then read or write data (Dell, 2016).
\end{itemize}
Variables:
\begin{itemize}
\item Migrate (sched\_nr\_migrate) controls how many task are moved across
processors through migration software interrupts (Occurs when a program
ends or requests certain services from the operating system.) If many
tasks are created by SCHED\_OTHER, they will all run on the same processor.
The default value is 32, If the value increases, the performance of
the SCHED\_OTHER threads will be boosted, having the disadvantage
of increasing the latency for real-time tasks.
\item Runtime (sched\_rt\_runtime\_us), by default real-time tasks will
consume 95\% of the time (CPU/sec), and the other 5\% is used by SCHED\_OTHER
tasks (Suse, n.d).
\end{itemize}
RamSpeed is a benchmark to test the performance of the RAM with different
operations like Copy, simply moves data from one memory location to
another; Scale, it is like Copy, but it multiplies the value by a
constant before writing to the new location; Add, read a value from
a memory location, then read other value from another place, adds
them together and writes the result on a new location; Triad, combines
the Scale and Add function, it is like the Add function with the exception
that the first value is multiplied by a constant before it is added
to the second value. All the operations are realized with 2 types
of variables (integer and floating point). The results are presented
in MB per second (Hopper, 2015).
\section{Objective}
The objective of this project is to see how modifications in the kernel
improves or deteriorates the RAM memory performance of the execute
process, in this case the process of \textquotedblleft Add\textquotedblright{}
with integer variables.
\section{Justification}
Nowadays the application programs are more complex, having the necessity
of more RAM memory to run adequately, providing an outstanding user
experience. Also a real technology trend is the multitasking; to have
multiple programs running simultaneously it is necessary to have a
larger amount of memory in order to have data and instructions closer
to the processor.
Advantages:
\begin{itemize}
\item More space to store data and instructions closer to the CPU.
\item The ability to open several programs simultaneously without crashing.
\item Multitask
\item Increase of performance because swapping is not needed.
\end{itemize}
Disadvantages:
\begin{itemize}
\item At some point, there will be no difference between 16Gb or 32 Gb of
RAM.
\item Power Consumption
\item Expensive
\end{itemize}
\section{Development}
For this report, we used a Laptop with the next specification for
software and hardware. The hardware was a processor Intel Core i5-2410M
@ 2.90GHz (4 Cores), a motherboard LENOVO KL6, a chipset Intel 2nd
Generation Core Family DRAM, a memory (RAM) of 4096MB, and a disk
750GB Seagate ST9750420AS.
The type of RAM Memory is a DDR3 DRAM with a speed of 1334 Mhz and
a total and data width of 64 bits. This means that the memory is Double
Data Rate 3 Dynamic Random-Access Memory. It can transfer data at
a clock rate of 800-2600 MHz
Advantages:
\begin{itemize}
\item The transfer of data is faster
\item Less consumption of energy due to the improvements in the performance
at low energy.
\end{itemize}
Disadvantages:
\begin{itemize}
\item There is no reduction in latency.
\end{itemize}
And the software was an Operating System Ubuntu 16.04, with a kernel
4.4.0-31-generic (x86\_64).
First, we decided to do the test of the RAM performance doing
the \textquotedblleft ADD\textquotedblright{} operation in integers
and with different scenarios of the variables, one without changes,
one with greater migrate but less runtime, other with greater migrate
and greater runtime, etc. We took note of this results to create the
different graphs. One thing that really caught our attention was that,
if we repeat some of the variables, the result changed quite a bit,
and the reason we think this happened was because sometimes, during
the tests, we were doing other projects/homeworks in the computer
so it may slowed the test, that\textquoteright s why in the result,
sometimes the data looks a little bit odd. For the migration, we did
the test with 10, 32, 64 and 120; and for the runtime we did the test
with 300000, 600000, 950000 and 1000000.
\section{Results}
\includegraphics{1}
Here we reduce the initial value of the migrate from 32 to 10 and expected that the average time will be reduce.
\includegraphics{2}
In this one we implemented the initial value of migrate, 32, and comparing it with the first one, the 10, the first one was more consistent that this one, may be because of what we explained in the development section.
\includegraphics{3}
Here, the graph looks more similar to the second one than the first one, but has more consistent results because there isn’t a BIG jump from one point to another.
\includegraphics{4}
This final test was with almost the quadruple of the migrate and what we expected was an increase on the performance since the beginning, and it happened. Even though the test didn’t increase a lot with the changes in the runtime, it started at a high performance that the other tests.
\includegraphics{5}
Finally, we can say that, if we want to be even more precise with the results of each test, we should do them without doing anything else in the computer because it can affect, not by a lot, but it can. Also, we could observe that the increase in the migrate is the one that affects the most in our tests because it moves more the average time while the runtime affects a little bit.
\section{Conclusion}
Finally, after doing the test, we can conclude that the performance of the RAM can be affected by the migrate variable in the kernel. The runtime variable didn’t affect as much as we thought it would. Migrate as it says in the theoretical framework, boosted the SCHED OTHER threads, but the real-time tasks got worse, having slowdowns in the performance of the computer, this happened a lot during the test with values like 64 and 120. You can’t have both at maximum at the same time, there has to be a balanced between or sacrifice the performance of the SCHED OTHER threads for real-time tasks and vice versa.
\section{References}
\indent
\leftskip 0.3in
\parindent -0.3in
Bitesize. (n.d). CPU and Memory. BBC. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/education
Computer Memory Upgrade. (2003). Memory and its influence on performance.
Computer Memory Upgrade. Retrieved from http://www.computermemoryupgrade.net/
Dell. (2016). How Random Access Memory affects performance. Dell.
Retrieved from http://www.dell.com/support/
Hopper, Jenifer. (2015). Untangling memory access measurements. IBM
Developer Works. Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/
Suse. (n.d). Completely Fair Scheduler. Suse. Retrieved from https://www.suse.com/documentation/
Williams, Jane. (n.d). How Does Memory Affect Processors?. Chron.
Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/
\end{document}